Countries are currently testing WTO drug regulations, looking for a WTO decision to resolve the conflict
AfricaNews, KaiserNetwork, 2007
[“Daily HIV/Aids Report,” May 1, Lexis]
Thailand's decision to issue a compulsory license for Kaletra "goes against every principle of intellectual property protection" under WTO regulations, but Abbott has "undermined its own credibility" because of how it has dealt with the situation, a Wall Street Journal editorial says. According to the Journal, "antipharmaceutical activists have looked for years for a government pliable enough to test" WTO regulations on compulsory licensing. The groups "want to set a precedent that erodes property rights, with a goal of selling drugs at cut-rate prices everywhere," the editorial says. The "only real weapon" a drug company has in a patent battle is to withdraw from an "offending country's market," the editorial says. However, by "threatening withdrawal and then reversing itself under pressure, Abbott has ... made it harder for other companies to take a stronger stand." Large drug manufacturers have become "global whipping boys, but their therapies can't be produced on a government whim," the editorial says, concluding, "The Abbott precedent is a bad one for global property rights, and the biggest losers will be the world's poor and sick" (Wall Street Journal, 4/30).
B. Link –
Compliance with TRIPS is key to the credibility and survival of the WTO
Charles S. Levy, Partner, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, Washington, D.C., 2000
[“Implementing Trips--A Test of Political Will,” Law and Policy in International Business, 31 Law & Pol'y Int'l Bus. 789, Lexis] Rein
The significant noncompliance with TRIPS that we are facing now poses a challenge to the WTO members by testing their commitment to IP protection and to the WTO system itself. Those of us who believe in strong IP protection and who worked hard to negotiate this agreement need to ensure that our objective in TRIPS, to ensure a minimum standard of adequate and effective IP protection, not be undercut. Even more broadly, WTO members as a whole need to support TRIPS; if they fail to hold members to their commitments in TRIPS, the WTOitself loses prestige, revealing itself to be either unable or unwilling to enforce the agreements that its members negotiate. If the WTO is to maintain any credibility or power in the future, it has to be able to deliver on the agreements that its members negotiate. This is especially significant if the WTO moves into new areas that may also require members to adopt new legal or regulatory systems.
C. Impact –
Collapse of the WTO causes extinction
Copley News Service, 99 (December 1)
For decades, many children in America and other countries went to bed fearing annihilation by nuclear war. The specter of nuclear winter freezing the life out of planet Earth seemed very real. Activists protesting the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle apparently have forgotten that threat. The truth is that nations join together in groups like the WTO not just to further their own prosperity, but also to forestall conflict with other nations. In a way, our planet has traded in the threat of a worldwide nuclear war for the benefit of cooperative global economics. Some Seattle protesters clearly fancy themselves to be in the mold of nuclear disarmament or anti-Vietnam War protesters of decades past. But they're not. They're special-interest activists, whether the cause is environmental, labor or paranoia about global government. Actually, most of the demonstrators in Seattle are very much unlike yesterday's peace activists, such as Beatle John Lennon or philosopher Bertrand Russell, the father of the nuclear disarmament movement, both of whom urged people and nations to work together rather than strive against each other. These and other war protesters would probably approve of 135 WTO nations sitting down peacefully to discuss economic issues that in the past might have been settled by bullets and bombs. As long as nations are trading peacefully, and their economies are built on exports to other countries, they have a major disincentive to wage war. That's why bringing China, a budding superpower, into the WTO is so important. As exports to theUnited Statesand the rest of the world feed Chinese prosperity, and that prosperity increases demand for the goods we produce, the threat of hostility diminishes. Many anti-trade protesters in Seattle claim that only multinational corporations benefit from global trade, and that it's the everyday wage earners who get hurt. That's just plain wrong. First of all, it's not the military-industrial complex benefiting. It's U.S. companies that make high-tech goods. And those companies provide a growing number of jobs for Americans. In San Diego, many people have good jobs at Qualcomm, Solar Turbines and other companies for whom overseas markets are essential. In Seattle, many of the 100,000 people who work at Boeing would lose their livelihoods without world trade. Foreign trade today accounts for 30 percent of our gross domestic product. That's a lot of jobs for everyday workers. Growing global prosperity has helped counter the specter of nuclear winter. Nations of the world are learning to live and work together, like the singers of anti-war songs once imagined. Those who care about world peace shouldn't be protesting world trade. They should be celebrating it.
A. Uniqueness –
Countries are currently testing WTO drug regulations, looking for a WTO decision to resolve the conflict
Africa News, KaiserNetwork, 2007
[“Daily HIV/Aids Report,” May 1, Lexis]
Thailand's decision to issue a compulsory license for Kaletra "goes against every principle of intellectual property protection" under WTO regulations, but Abbott has "undermined its own credibility" because of how it has dealt with the situation, a Wall Street Journal editorial says. According to the Journal, "antipharmaceutical activists have looked for years for a government pliable enough to test" WTO regulations on compulsory licensing. The groups "want to set a precedent that erodes property rights, with a goal of selling drugs at cut-rate prices everywhere," the editorial says. The "only real weapon" a drug company has in a patent battle is to withdraw from an "offending country's market," the editorial says. However, by "threatening withdrawal and then reversing itself under pressure, Abbott has ... made it harder for other companies to take a stronger stand." Large drug manufacturers have become "global whipping boys, but their therapies can't be produced on a government whim," the editorial says, concluding, "The Abbott precedent is a bad one for global property rights, and the biggest losers will be the world's poor and sick" (Wall Street Journal, 4/30).
B. Link –
Compliance with TRIPS is key to the credibility and survival of the WTO
Charles S. Levy, Partner, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, Washington, D.C., 2000
[“Implementing Trips--A Test of Political Will,” Law and Policy in International Business, 31 Law & Pol'y Int'l Bus. 789, Lexis] Rein
The significant noncompliance with TRIPS that we are facing now poses a challenge to the WTO members by testing their commitment to IP protection and to the WTO system itself. Those of us who believe in strong IP protection and who worked hard to negotiate this agreement need to ensure that our objective in TRIPS, to ensure a minimum standard of adequate and effective IP protection, not be undercut. Even more broadly, WTO members as a whole need to support TRIPS; if they fail to hold members to their commitments in TRIPS, the WTO itself loses prestige, revealing itself to be either unable or unwilling to enforce the agreements that its members negotiate. If the WTO is to maintain any credibility or power in the future, it has to be able to deliver on the agreements that its members negotiate. This is especially significant if the WTO moves into new areas that may also require members to adopt new legal or regulatory systems.
C. Impact –
Collapse of the WTO causes extinction
Copley News Service, 99 (December 1)
For decades, many children in America and other countries went to bed fearing annihilation by nuclear war. The specter of nuclear winter freezing the life out of planet Earth seemed very real. Activists protesting the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle apparently have forgotten that threat. The truth is that nations join together in groups like the WTO not just to further their own prosperity, but also to forestall conflict with other nations. In a way, our planet has traded in the threat of a worldwide nuclear war for the benefit of cooperative global economics. Some Seattle protesters clearly fancy themselves to be in the mold of nuclear disarmament or anti-Vietnam War protesters of decades past. But they're not. They're special-interest activists, whether the cause is environmental, labor or paranoia about global government. Actually, most of the demonstrators in Seattle are very much unlike yesterday's peace activists, such as Beatle John Lennon or philosopher Bertrand Russell, the father of the nuclear disarmament movement, both of whom urged people and nations to work together rather than strive against each other. These and other war protesters would probably approve of 135 WTO nations sitting down peacefully to discuss economic issues that in the past might have been settled by bullets and bombs. As long as nations are trading peacefully, and their economies are built on exports to other countries, they have a major disincentive to wage war. That's why bringing China, a budding superpower, into the WTO is so important. As exports to the United States and the rest of the world feed Chinese prosperity, and that prosperity increases demand for the goods we produce, the threat of hostility diminishes. Many anti-trade protesters in Seattle claim that only multinational corporations benefit from global trade, and that it's the everyday wage earners who get hurt. That's just plain wrong. First of all, it's not the military-industrial complex benefiting. It's U.S. companies that make high-tech goods. And those companies provide a growing number of jobs for Americans. In San Diego, many people have good jobs at Qualcomm, Solar Turbines and other companies for whom overseas markets are essential. In Seattle, many of the 100,000 people who work at Boeing would lose their livelihoods without world trade. Foreign trade today accounts for 30 percent of our gross domestic product. That's a lot of jobs for everyday workers. Growing global prosperity has helped counter the specter of nuclear winter. Nations of the world are learning to live and work together, like the singers of anti-war songs once imagined. Those who care about world peace shouldn't be protesting world trade. They should be celebrating it.